Day 7

June 13

In preparation for Mondays grand opening of the youth center we did one thing today. Clean. When we arrived this morning we were told there were several things that needed to be done. Since I didn't want to get stuck with bathrooms(great attitude I know) I immediately said I would do windows. I also figured it would be a pretty easy job.

Wrong.

They were filthy. They were covered with, what looked like, years of dirt and grime. I had no idea we would spend the next five hours trying to get them crystal clear.

Other cleaning that needed to be done was washing walls, washing chairs, bathrooms, moving boxes of books and other reading material into a small room, and the biggest job was clearing away a huge pile of stuff that had accumulated over several years. Time to get busy.


Washing walls.

It's early and he already looks like this.

After many hours, lots of water buckets and even more sweat they are finally see through.

Working hard.

This poor group spent all day washing chair after chair after chair.
We finally made it to the outside of the windows. It might not have taken so long if we didn't have to wash each window four-six times just to get it looking decent. We were to the 'throw water on it and try to loosen the dirt' phase of the outside windows. After it was loose we would go over it several times with more water and a squeegee then we would go over it with window cleaner.

While we were cleaning the last of the inside windows we were next to the junk pile. They were getting to the bottom of it when they moved something big and hundreds of cockroaches came running out. They aren't my favorite thing but we were still far enough away that they weren't bothering us. We Chrisanna and I were watching all of the commotion when out popped one and then another of these lovely creatures.


No these aren't small spiders that look large because of the camera. They were very large spiders that don't look quite big enough in the picture. I was OK because they were still far enough away that I didn't feel threatened. Then one started scurrying over towards us and I jumped off the chair, squealed like a little girl and soon almost everyone was looking at them. Greg even grabbed one of them with a rag so we could see it up close. Without getting close enough to measure I would say they were between four and five inches across. This little sighting brought all work to a halt for at least half an hour. Once we were able to get back to work we were done in no time.

There is a spa around the corner from the hotel that gives an hour full body massage for about $12 including tip. After our work day the Harrington's and us walked straight off the bus and headed to the Green Spa for some relaxation. The massage was a little more painful than I expected but it felt good anyway. After this it was dinner at a rib restaurant called Racks(yum!) and off to bed.
These are the get ups we had to wear. We went back a couple days later but you'll have to wait to see Rob and Keith in theirs :o)